Textmanuscripts - Les Enluminures

Marriage certificate for Mermet Frère and Jeannette Paquelon

In Latin, illuminated document on parchment France, Lyons, dated 1476

Single sheet of parchment, 8 lines written in a gothic hand, lines alternating in gold and blue, full illuminated border of colored acanthus, flowers, and gold ivy-leaves, four burnished gold crosses in the center of each border. Dimensions: 385 x 250 mm.

This certificate commemorates the marriage of Mermet Frère of Brussieu and Jeannette Paquelon of Courzieu on 30 June 1476. The two families lived west of Lyons – Brussieu and Courzieu are less than four miles apart. The couple is attested in the Lyonnais parish records (Archives départementales du Rhône, fonds Poidebard), and they had two children, Barthélémy and Simon. Mermet Frère died in 1533. In the second half of the seventeenth century, the Frère family acquired the Castle of Charfetain which remained in the family’s possession until 1793. The present manuscript may well have once been part of their family archive.